Manly Men, Avert Your Eyes

[akirlu]

...'cause this is all about the girly. I was trying to hunt down an image I saw t'other day somewhere (Facebook? Pinterest?) of a riot of little girls in pink dresses and tiaras running full tilt down a field with great, big, steampunk-looking, shiny silver rayguns clutched in their arms. No luck there, but you never know what searching on a string that includes tiaras and guns will get you. So instead I stumbled on this report of all the tiaras that appeared at the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden a couple of years ago. Holy cow, that's some serious bling on display. The queen of Norway has an emerald tiara that once belonged to the Empress Josephine, and that's not even remotely the best one. And that's a whole lot of princesses, too, togged out in their finery. (Pity no one thought to give them ray guns, though.) I think my favorite is the bride herself, as is only fitting, in the Cameo Tiara, but there's a great many to choose from. Nevermind the Ascot hats, if you're gonna be a princess, you should by ghu get to trot out the tiara sometimes and by golly they do.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

Was this what you were looking for? http://parenting.failblog.org/2012/03/11/crazy-parenting-fails-if-you-thought-toddlers-tiaras-was-bad/

And thank you for the tiara report.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I will forever love you for finding The Royal Order of Sartorial Splendor and its author's obsessions with tiaras. Zow!

I think the Cartier Diamond and Pearl Tiara is my favorite, though the bride's Cameo Tiara is stunning and the emeralds on the Queen of Norway are stunning.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes! That's it!! Thanks so much. I wanted to share it with my boss 'cause at least one of her granddaughters totally belongs in that picture.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I still prefer the hats, but the tiaras are a hoot. After looking at that collection of queens and princesses with bonus duchesses, I conclude that tiaras look best on young princesses or elderly queens; they aren't so becoming to the middle-aged. If I myself had a tiara, I would wear it at every opportunity, even though I am middle-aged and therefore would not be flattered by the look.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Great. Now *I* want a tiara. I can wear it while I'm cleaning house.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I sort of know what you mean but I think it's not even so much age as knowing when to switch to a hair- and make-up style that suits the age you are now rather than the age you were 30 or more years ago. I think the most unfortunate combination was in fact Birgitta of Sweden who looks like the dolled-up corpse of a mummified, heroin-addled, 100-year-old hooker in her Alice Cooper mascara and Limahl-wig hair. The tiara just makes for the glitter of broken glass dusting the train wreck.

You, on the other hand, could totally rock a tiara.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

You can wear it to Regency dances. Being a convention-going fan means never having to say, "but I wouldn't have any place to wear it."

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, David Levine once observed that the wonder of the internet is the way it allows us to leverage the obsessive compulsive tendencies of other people without having to make small talk with them at parties, and I have to say this find is a prime example of that principle. This is a woman (?) who knows her shit when it comes to tiaras.

Myself, I quite like the Mellerio Floral Tiara, Princess Claire of Belgium's diamond and pearl tiara, the Habsburg fringe tiara, and Princess Kelly of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's turquoise one.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

See, I think Birgitta looks like an aging babe who still probably exudes babehood in person while exuding wrecked train in photographs. That's where Queen Elizabeth has an advantage over other royals; she was never a babe, so she's always had to depend on looking more dignified than anyone else in the room. How she manages to do that while wearing a flowered coal scuttle on her head baffles me.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I love this blog. I've run into it a couple of times when I do my periodic sweep of All Thing Royal on the internets. One of the things that always strikes me about the older tiaras is that they were designed during times when women wore their hair radically differently--i.e., piled high and elaborately--and it's interesting to see how they fare with today's more casual presentation. Some really work; some really don't.

I think my favorites on display here are the Cameo tiara, Queen Josephine's Amethyst Tiara, Queen Anne-Marie's rubies, the Pearl Poire Tiara, and the Rose-Cut Diamond Bandeau. While the fringe tiaras are beautiful, for some reason they just don't quite do it for me--and some of the spikey ones look too much like cartoon versions of tiaras to me.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

How she manages to do that while wearing a flowered coal scuttle on her head baffles me.

Training and experience. And posture. Always posture.

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

OMG.....running to dig out my "Where's My Tiara?" tshirt!

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

This. :)

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

That picture is totally made of win.

I recently won on a smaller gamble. I have a niece who lives about 800 miles away, so I don't see her much. She just graduated high school this spring. I got her a nice Swiss Army knife for a present because, hey, everyone needs one. I was somewhat flying blind because she's pretty femme, and I didn't know if she would Get It.
Fortunately, she did. She loves it.